Kaisa Varis B-sample also positive (UPDATED 16:30)

IBU Medical Committee chairman indicates athlete was under surveillance before positive test

Kaisa Varis

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Finnish biathlete and former cross-country skier Kaisa Varis will learn her fate today when the International Biathlon Union (IBU) announces the results of her B-sample, following the disclosure last week that Varis tested positive for a banned substance at the beginning of the month.
      If - as seems probable on past experiences - the B-sample flags up positive, Varis is likely to face a lifetime ban from competition.
      As a cross-country skier, she was banned for two years in 2003 for the use of the illegal performance-enhancing hormone EPO.
     
The past few days have seen a trickle of information coming out surrounding the case.
      Both the International Ski Federation (FIS) and the IBU have for years now been monitoring competitors’ blood-values and checking for fluctuations, and have kept records of the data. This has proved to be the downfall of a number of athletes, most recently apparently Kaisa Varis.
      On Wednesday, the Chairman of the IBU’s Medical Committee, Canadian James E. Carrabre, fired a substantial broadside about the Varis case in comments made to the late-edition tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
     
Dr. Carrabre noted that the scientists had spotted signs in Varis’s blood samples to indicate that she had been taking small doses of the performance- and endurance-enhancing hormone erythropoietin (EPO) throughout the season to date. Before a competition at Oberhof on January 6th, she took another dose and she was nailed in a random test.
      Carrabre indicated that the positive result would have emerged sooner or later.
     
Small traces of EPO pass out of the athlete’s system quite quickly, and hence timing is everything from the testers’ perspective.
      Carrabre also flatly denies all claims made by the Finnish biathlete earlier this week to the effect that she would not have been correctly informed about the date of testing the B-sample. Varis has made a formal complaint that she was not able to exercise her right to be present in person at the laboratory testing procedure.
      Analysis of the sample began in a Lausanne laboratory on Tuesday afternoon.
      The results will be announced today at 16:00 Finnish time in connection with the 2008 Junior/Youth World Championships in Ruhpolding, Germany.
      A time has apparently been set aside on Friday for Varis and her representatives to be heard. Only then will the IBU declare its ruling on the matter.
     
According to a statement from the IBU, Varis had requested that the analysis of the B-sample be postponed until February 5th.
      The IBU would not agree to this, since there is always a danger over time that the sample will decay to the point where it is no longer possible to determine the presence of EPO.
      Carrabre commented that the IBU has once previously been caught out in this way, and an athlete who tested positive on the A-sample was able to give them the slip.
      Hannu Litmanen, the Finnish member on the IBU’s Medical Committee, reported that he had no personal knowledge of Varis’s having been on any watch-list, nor did he have any information on her test results during the current season.
     
This is how the system works. Information on possibly questionable cases is kept within a very small circle, and the testing net is tightened.
      Much the same seems to have happened to Kaisa Varis in connection with her earlier doping infringement in Val di Fiemme in 2003.
      At that time the FIS Secretary-General Sarah Lewis revealed to Helsingin Sanomat that Varis had been under surveillance for some months before the wheels finally came off at the Nordic Skiing World Championships.
      “Kaisa should have understood that she was likely to be under the magnifying glass”, said Hannu Litmanen.
      The World Anti-Doping Agency WADA was not willing to comment to the newspaper on Wednesday about Varis’s possible EPO violation.
     
     
UPDATED THURSDAY 31.1.2008, 16:30
     
     
B-sample also positive; Varis could face life ban from competition
     
     
The B-sample of Finnish biathlete and former cross-country skier Kaisa Varis has also tested positive for a banned substance.
      The International Biathlon Union (IBU) announced the results of the testing on the second sample on Thursday afternoon, following the disclosure last week that Varis had tested positive beginning of the month.
      As previously suspected, the substance in question is the illegal performance-enhancing hormone erythropoietin (EPO).
     
Varis is now likely to face a lifetime ban from competition.
      In 2003 she was banned for two years for the use of EPO while competing at the Nordic Skiing World Championships in Italy.
      That incident further rocked Finnish cross-country skiing, coming as it did just two years and one World Championships after the scandals of the 2001 games in Lahti, where no fewer than six Finnish athletes tested positive for a prohibited plasma expander.
     
According to the IBU Secretary-General Michael Geistlinger, the Union's Executive Board will convene in special session tomorrow.
      After this, Varis will have a chance to plead her case in early February, and then the Board will meet again to reach a decision on the matter.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  COMMENT: A sad ending to a sporting career? (25.1.2008)
  Biathlete Kaisa Varis suspected of doping violation (24.1.2008)

Links:
  International Biathlon Union
  WADA

Helsingin Sanomat